The Scandal of Failing Benefits
In Figures:
£23 billion in benefits for low-income individuals go unclaimed annually.
1/6 of eligible UC and Pension Credit claimants fail to claim their entitlement.
45% of eligible households miss out on Council Tax Support.
8M pensioners lost their £200 (£300 for those born pre-1944) Winter Fuel Allowance due to means-testing.
State Pension: +8.5% (2024), +10.1% (2023), +4.1% rise planned (2025).
Universal Credit: +6.7% (2024), +10.1% (2023), +1.7% rise planned (2025).
2/3 of UC claimants live in households with low-paid workers but face stigma.
The DWP Charter does not have a corresponding duty to insist that citizen’s claim the benefits to which they are entitled. It states: “we will publish information about benefits and services online at GOV.UK” – and that is at far as it goes.
This disjunction between the duty of the citizen to pay the right tax and of the government to ensure they do on the one hand, and the simple duty to publish information without any obligation on DWP to ensure that those who are entitled receive and understand it on the other, far less that they should receive it (though citizens must pay tax) is striking. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander but not when it comes to ensuring government takes the right tax from the citizen and that the citizen receives the right benefits. Some do, sometimes after hard work to make sure they get it – but quite a few don’t.
My first academic article in 1976 was on a recently introduced means-tested benefit, Housing Benefit. I spent days knocking on doors in Batley for the Community Development Project and trying to persuade disbelieving residents to claim the benefits to which they were entitled. Generally they’d say ‘He’s a college lad, he means well, but council don’t give you money’, and offer me tea and a digestive biscuit.
We cracked it in the end by persuading Joe Kenyon, a retired miner and trade union activist who would sit in the club, buttonhole the locals and simply order them to sign the forms. They respected him and did so. All we had to do was keep up the flow of pints.
Means-tested benefits have always failed to reach those who should get them. The problem is exacerbated by the growth of the means-tested sector in welfare. At present the best estimates are that about a sixth of those who should get UC and means-tested Pension Credit fail to do so. For some benefits such as Council Tax Support about 45 per cent fail to claim.
The contradiction between the duty to pay tax and the lack of duty on government to make sure you get the benefits which are your citizen right came to a head in the recent furore about the shift from universal to means-tested Winter Fuel Allowances. This denied some eight million pensioners who had previously received an allowance of £200 (£300 if you were born before 1944) the money and provoked sharp attacks on the government.
The government’s position was that pensioners were generally not so badly off. The basic state pension is £221.20, many pensioners get additional state or private pensions and in any case, pensions rose by 8.5% in April 2024 following a 10.1% increase the previous year with an increase of 4.1% scheduled for April 2025. Contrast this with Universal Credit of £92 a week for an over 25, which rose by much less: 6.7% in 2024 and 10.1% in 2023, scheduled to increase by 1.7% in April 2025. The result is that pensions are worth more and that the real value of pensions continues to rise while that of benefits for those of working age continues to fall according the House of Commons Library analysis.
Almost all readers of this Blog will understand why this is. Pensioners are seen as deserving, are likely to vote and most people hope to be a pensioneer one day. UC claimers are seen by many as undeserving (despite the fact that about two-thirds are in households supported by a very low-paid worker), tend not to vote and no-one believes they’ll be on such a pariah benefit. The point is that low means-tested benefits for those of working age attract little attention while anything that affects pensioners creates a major fuss.
Now government has launched a campaign to increase the take-up of Pension Credit (which passports to Winter Fuel Allowance and other benefits) with a letter to every pensioner and support for local authorities to run their own leaflet and targeted advice campaigns. The publicity has resulted in an uptick in claiming – not enormous but welcome.
The real issue is – if this can be done for deserving pensioners when there is political commotion, why not for other groups, many of whom are far more vulnerable? Policy in Practice estimates that £23 billion of benefits intended by Parliament for those on low incomes as of right lie unclaimed.
Maybe that’s an answer: the undeserving poor suffer because they are at the bottom of the priority list for public spending.
